Thousands come seeking God at Jesus ’23

This weekend was the 10^th annual Jesus conference hosted by Jesus Image in Orlando Florida. Thousands of Christians came from around the globe. Lead Pastor of Jesus Image Church, Michael Koulianos, identified the overarching message that the Lord was giving through the speakers, which was death to self by obedience to the Holy Spirit. In a time of the world when many make choices based on personal motives, could God be asking his people to die to every selfish ambition, to live for the sake of the Gospel and be like Jesus Christ?

The phrase “death to self” may not make sense to many, but to these Christians it’s the underlying foundation of God’s message to the world. The conference speakers were all honing in on this topic; if you want to truly follow Jesus, you must give up your will, to align with God’s, and that is to die to self. While this may seem impossible and awful to unbelievers, Christians believe that with God it is possible and He’s worth it. 

The crowds didn’t appear at all discouraged by this word of dying to self. They rejoiced in times of worship by singing, jumping, and dancing. In moments of attentive reverence, they heard stories of Brother Yun, a Chinese minister who’d been imprisoned for sharing his faith in China, where many Christians hide their beliefs due to fear of persecution. There was weeping and crying out in desperation to God for help, when Heidi Baker, founder of Iris Global, took the platform. She shared a grotesque vision the Lord gave her, of a church that is like a chicken running around with its head cut off, blood spurting everywhere, because it’s just trying to do its own thing and not connected to the headship of Jesus. 

The event was a full spectrum of emotions. When asked why he thought multitudes were drawn to this conference one attendee, Samuel McAbee said, “In today’s day and age there’s just a lot of yearning for something more, because as humans we have a spirit, and we have to feed that spirit. The only way to do that is with God, Holy Spirit, and spending time with Jesus. So, I think so many of us are hungry and looking in the wrong places, so everybody has been going to every possible thing they can, to try to find something, and now they are coming to Jesus ’23 and Jesus Image to finally find that. That’s probably the main reason.”